


all i’ve ever known is how to hold my own (but now i wanna hold you)

by C_AND_B



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:00:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22638868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/C_AND_B/pseuds/C_AND_B
Summary: kara boldly taps on her walls and Lena learns how to let her in. day by day. step by step. it’s not always a linear process but she thinks she’s getting better.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 78
Kudos: 1744





	all i’ve ever known is how to hold my own (but now i wanna hold you)

**Author's Note:**

> kinda mostly canon except lets just all agree to ignore the whole daxamite thing, and also the reign thing, and the James romance thing for like 8k words. sound as a pound. lets rock and roll kids.

Kara Danvers is a whirlwind and a gentle breeze wrapped into one person.

She appears in Lena’s life at a crazy time and gets herself involved in crazy situations and tries to make friends with Lena for no reason other than to be friends. Her immediate reaction is to shut it down, to make it a business arrangement at most, an occasional path cross at least - even if there is a part of her screaming that maybe this time would be different. That maybe, _finally_ , she’d found someone who wouldn’t break her down but build her up instead. Which is an intimidating thought to say the least.

It’s why she says no. That weird spark of hope that tells her to give it a chance is the exact reason she smothers it when Kara invites her to game night. Then again it’s also the reason she ends up letting Kara join her for lunch because Lena doesn’t want to feel like she’s drowning in loneliness anymore. Just wants to breathe uninhibited if only for a second (maybe it would be worth being dunked back under when it all went wrong).

And so it begins.

A sequence of Kara testing her boundaries and Lena trying not to run away.

Kara starts small, like she knows Lena is prone to startling.

She doesn’t invite her to meet all her friends or invite her over to her apartment or ask to see Lena’s. She does meet Lena on her turf though, the turf she feels the most comfortable in - her office - with nothing but a simple cup of coffee and a smile.

(There is a second cup of coffee that gets deposited on Jess’ desk and Lena puts a mark in the _there’s more to Kara than meets the eye_ column for that genius manoeuvre to get her onside – even if she’s entirely sure there was no intent beyond being nice).

“Would you like to sit?” Lena gestures to the chair across the desk from her, she’s not sure she’s ready for the couch just yet. Already feels a little like she wishes her desk wasn’t so open so Kara couldn’t see the way she was holding her own leg to stop it from bouncing.

“I actually have a meeting but I remember you saying the coffee place near you is terrible and I thought that maybe your morning could use a pick-me-up. Make it good before something can make it bad. It’s from Noonan’s – in case you like it and want it again. I could bring you one again obviously if you ever wanted because it’s probably not on your way. I’m sorry; those were a lot of words.”

“Don’t apologise. Thank you.” Not just for the coffee. She knows that Kara created a time limit for her benefit – that she created an excuse to not bombard Lena for too long, that she built in an escape plan as to not overwhelm her. It’s sweet.

“It’s my pleasure.”

Lena suddenly doesn’t want her to escape immediately. “Is your meeting right now?”

“I could spare a couple minutes,” Kara says, dropping onto the proffered chair.

“Well, maybe you could tell me what a day looks like for Kara Danvers?” Is she all she has to ask to deflect for Kara to launch into her plans for the day and the people she’ll see – making jokes about her office and her co-workers like Lena has any idea who any of them are (she feels a little like she knows them better than their own mothers by the end of it).

It’s nice, listening to Kara talk. It’s nice knowing that Kara is trying to fill as much time as she can when she starts talking about the water cooler and the different settings it has because she’s stopping herself from asking about Lena in return, waiting instead to see if Lena will offer it up herself. She finds that she wants to. She really _wants_ to.

Instead she says, “The water cooler here isn’t nearly as exciting,” because she’s an idiot.

“Well that’s the cool thing about being the boss – you can buy a new one.” Kara winks (mainly blinks) and by the end of the day Lena does just that.

She preens a little when Kara appears exactly one week later with another perfect coffee and a compliment for the machine she saw on the walk in. She insists she heard Lena’s employees gushing about it as she passed but Lena doesn’t think anyone else cares.

She cares though.

She feels herself starting to care again and it’s terrifying.

* * *

Monday coffee becomes their thing. Kara appears before her day begins and when Lena has already been in the office for two hours because she’d never been good at separating work and life. She appears with a coffee and whatever treat she’s decided Lena has to try that day and stories from her week – about work, and her friends, and cute dogs she saw walking around the city.

(She explains the dogs in the most detail).

Lena grows to love it. The twenty minutes she steals of her day, the ones that she begins to want her to steal more of because she likes talking to Kara. She likes how animated she gets when she tells stories, and how intent her eyes were when listening to Lena share a few titbits of her own week like nothing else she heard that day could be as important.

It made her week feel lighter before it even began. It gave her something to look forward to.

And then one Monday… nothing.

Lena inevitably panics. Complete zero to a hundred, what if somebody found out she was friends with a Luthor and decided to use it against her? What if Kara had been investigating something dangerous and gotten too caught up in the web and was in danger? What if Kara woke up that morning and decided that she couldn’t be bothered with Lena anymore?

She spends all day over thinking. She spends all night tossing and turning in her bed. She strolls onto her floor the next morning, far later than usual and with far less grace, to find Kara patiently waiting by Jess’ desk with a coffee in each hand and a worried eye on her watch.

“Kara, you’re okay,” Lena speaks first, the tension dropping from her shoulders with a deep exhale. So maybe she cared a little more already than she was letting on and maybe she needed to apologise to Jess and her knowing looks for the day before where she a little too snappy.

“I’m sorry for not showing up yesterday – I hope you weren’t too caffeine deprived.” She was maybe deprived of a few things.

“I managed to make it through,” Lena half-jokes as she leads Kara into her office and away from Jess’ too interested ears.

“I’m glad. I really am sorry, not that you were expecting me or anything, I’m sure you don’t put that much thought into me but also in case you ever did, I was thinking you should have this.” It’s a slip of paper with numbers on it. She falters for a second as she looks at it. It’s been a while since she was given someone’s number. It makes her feel a little funny.

“Thank you, I’ll put it in my phone later.” Kara grins and Lena lets it fuel her. “I do, by the way. Put thought into you.” She says it a little too stiffly, avoiding eye contact and wholly awkward but Kara’s grin remains strong so she’s counting it a win.

“Good. I put thought into you too.” Definitely a win.

For once, when Kara starts to tell her about her day, Lena decides to share her own. Meetings that she has, conference calls and research. The different people she’ll come across - the ones she doesn’t mind and those she wishes she could knock some sense into.

It’s nothing deeper about her life. She doesn’t share all her secrets, doesn’t admit that she has no plans outside of work, that she hasn’t for a long time now - not since she left everything behind to start fresh in a new city (that she avoided it even when she was with Jack).

She just tells her what her day will be like and Kara listens without interruption, just an occasional ‘ _he sounds like an asshole_ ’ that has Lena laughing and a few questions as she nods along with Lena’s talk about her prospective research that has Lena figuring out problems she didn’t even realise she had yet. All of it done with such interest. Always genuine interest.

They talk until the second Jess calls about her meeting and Lena spends the rest of the day staring at Kara’s number, wondering if she should use it. She talks herself into it at a time that she should be asleep and expects that Kara is.

_thank you for putting thought into me_

Kara’s reply in an immediate, _always_

* * *

They text a lot. Lena had never really been one for it before - ahe felt a little like she was bad at it when it first started, when Kara took to messaging her about things other than making sure Lena was available for a Monday morning coffee, or if she’d finally seen the light and decided to try something beyond black coffee (sometimes she took it iced now, Kara seemed to think she’d achieved something on that so she got it more often than not).

She felt a little like she wasn’t doing it right because her replies were never very long, and she wasn’t using any of the emojis Kara seemed to adore and she was never great at messaging about nothing like Kara was. Kara was nothing short of an Olympic-level texter and she never seemed to question whether something was important enough to tell Lena. She just… told her.

She texted her random things about her day, and funny things her sister did, and sent pictures of the cute dogs she saw because finally she didn’t have to just describe them to Lena - although the pictures did always seem to come with a complete personality chart to match.

She texted about nothing and everything and Lena slowly got to grips with what it meant to have Kara Danvers’ phone number, began to quite like the way her erratic thoughts broke up her otherwise monotonous day and then one day she got the text.

_You wanna grab lunch tomorrow?_

She panics a little. She says yes and then she panics some more. Kara lets her pick the time and the place and it was still completely on her terms but she panics a little more for good measure.

She doesn’t remember the last time she was this nervous honestly. She doesn’t remember the last time she spent so long figuring out what to wear for work that day so that it would seem business like but casual enough that Kara wouldn’t question it but also nice enough that Kara might compliment her and she doesn’t even know why she wants the compliment.

She puts it down to knowing this is the moment their friendship will change, extend into something more. Not just occasional texters but people who know what the other one looks like when they stupidly choose noodles from the menu and spend the entire time opening their mouth a little too wide to accommodate and having sauce flick all over their chin.

Lena won’t be picking noodles.

She goes for a salad in the end when they’re sitting in the restaurant Lena remembered Kara mentioned made her favourite pizzas and she feels entirely less nervous as Kara rambles on about some article she’s writing and pulls mozzarella laden pizza slices away from the rest with deft precision (it’s almost an art form in a weird way).

“-and then I broke into his office, well not _broke_ per se, the door was unlocked, I just used that to my advantage to go inside and take a look at the documents. Well, turns out, he was completely fabricating his tax-“

It happens in a blur. The loud shout in her face, words that blend together in a familiar rhythm of _Lex_ and _Luthor_ and _family_ and _destroyed_. The familiar sickeningly sticky warmth of spit that splashes onto her cheek from pursed lips on a red face.

What’s less familiar is the body that places itself between them with a low, “Back off before I make you back off.” It’s hard to associate cardigan-wearing Kara with the tone. She barely looks like herself as she shields Lena - her shoulders drawn back, her fists clenched, chin lifted and jaw tight.

She looks sort of beautiful. Not that she didn’t always look beautiful. Kara was ethereal on normal day but now-

Oh.

_Oh_.

That explained the nerves.

“Kara, it’s fine,” she says, using her napkin to wipe her face and dropping money onto the table with a nod to the waitress who looks half apologetic and half like she can’t wait to tell her friends what she saw at work today. Kara doesn’t move. If anything her body becomes tenser.

Lena rests a hand gently on her shoulder. “Kara, honestly, its fine.”

“It’s not fine, Lena. He was rude, and horrible, and a real- a real _jackass_ and he should apologise.”

“Her brother is the reason my son is dead.”

“Exactly – _her brother_. Not her. Lena had nothing to do with that, has denounced Lex at every step. Do you feel like spitting in her face brought you justice? Do you feel vindicated making her feel guilt over something she already blames herself for despite playing no real part?

“Maybe you should go back and watch Lex’s trial. You know, the one where Lena turned her back on her family in pursuit of _actual_ justice instead of taking it out on someone who’s done nothing but try to make the world a better place outside of the shadow of their family’s decisions. Just a thought. Enjoy your lunch – I hope no one spits in it.”

Kara turns around the moment he looks thoroughly chastised, softening immediately at the sight of Lena - shifting back into her usual persona. She’s still beautiful.

“Come on, Kara. I’ll drive you back to CatCo.” Lena starts walking into way, leans into Kara’s hand on the small of her back as she falls into step with her - eyes fixed on Lena.

“Are you alright? I’m sorry he did that.”

Lena shrugs, in a manner unlike herself, “You get used to it.” The first time Lena had been shouted at she’d kept her cool until she was behind the closed door of her apartment and she cried until she had no tears left. The second time she drank until she passed out on her couch. By the third she’d stopped flinching. The fourth was when she really started using the boxes, when she fortified her walls and told herself no one would ever see her scared again.

“This has happened before?” Kara asks incredulously. Lena envies her belief in humanity and revels in the quiet anger that sits below the surface on behalf on Lena.

“Variations of it. I understand. Lex hurt a lot of people in his pursuit of his twisted version of justice and since they can’t take their anger out on him, I’m the next best thing.”

“That’s stupid,” Kara says plainly and a laugh leaves Lena’s lips before she can stop it – a sharp burst that she catches before it can escalate. “You’re nothing like Lex.”

“You really believe everything you said? You don’t think I should’ve seen it coming? Stopped it?” It’s the first time Lena had ever asked anyone before, first time she’d put words to the questions that had been running through her head since the second she found out what Lex had done. It’s the first time that she doesn’t think someone will immediately say yes.

“Family can blind us – when you want to believe the good in someone, you’ll fight to make things make sense, fight to convince yourself you’re imagining things. It’s not your fault for believing in the good of your brother Lena and, even if you had seen it coming, there’s no saying you could have stopped it. Maybe all seeing it would have done is ended with you dead.”

“Maybe I owed the world that price.”

Kara slips her hand into Lena’s as they wait on the sidewalk. She leaves the thought in the air for a second, leaves Lena to stand with her warmth before she speaks. “Personally I think the very best thing you can do for the world, Lena Luthor, is live in it. I mean, who else was going to take me back to work in a swanky town car and impress all my co-workers?”

Lena smiles, remains wordless on the ride to CatCo as Kara’s hand never leaves hers. She doesn’t try to pull away either, doesn’t even debate it. It’s the first piece of real contact she’s had in a while. It’s almost overwhelming how safe it makes her feel.

Kara doesn’t try pulling her into a hug when they arrive, or say anything to fill the silence that they’d created. She simply squeezes Lena’s hand softly with a look that says more than words ever could and Lena can’t believe how much she understood Lena without her ever having to say a thing.

Can’t believe how much she suddenly wanted to say.

* * *

Lena decides to make a move for once which, since she never learned how to half-ass things, means she decides to invite Kara to her gala by turning up at CatCo.

She almost talks herself out of it several times – namely because the whispering starts the second she asks where to find Kara and it doesn’t stop even as she powers on past their shock and follows the vague directions on how to find her on the crowded floor. 

She’s thankful she doesn’t give up when she sees how happy Kara looks to see her. She’s thankful she doesn’t give up when Kara actually says yes.

And maybe can’t bring herself to call it a date when she asks. Not yet. But she thinks some day she might like that so instead she fills the buffet with potstickers and tiny canapé sized pizzas and has half conversations as she watches the entrance and hopes that the next person will finally be Kara.

She almost passes out when it actually is Kara in a light blue dress, completely beautiful in her awkwardness that doesn’t try to disguise itself as anything else. Kara stood out from the rest of the crowd in more ways than one but she still walked amongst them with quiet confidence – it becomes a little more of a skip when she sees Lena (she’s definitely not the only thing skipping).

“You look lovely,” Lena says before she can catch the words.

Kara blushes, “Oh, thank you, my sister helped me pick it out. You look great too – though I think we all may be upstaged by the potstickers I’m seeing. They don’t seem like usual gala cuisine.”

“You said they were your favourite and I know these things can be kind of boring, and I’m probably going to have to spend a lot of time talking to random people, and I…” _didn’t want her to regret coming._ She can’t bring herself to say the last part even if it’s the part she means the most.

“I can wait. I’ll be around whenever you need to take a moment to talk to someone normal. Or as normal as a person can be when they’ve eaten three trays of potstickers.”

“Just three?”

“I’m aiming low so you’ll be more impressed by my actual achievements.”

“It’s a good technique,” Lena chuckles, she doesn’t believe for a single second that it’s a lie. Lena startles out of her about-to-be too long staring when she hears her name being called by someone or another that she doesn’t want to talk to but will for the sake of charity. “I better…”

“Go ahead, but Lena, be careful, okay? I, um, Supergirl is around checking the perimeter and stuff but I just- _please be careful_.” Lena nods, even if what she really wants to do is ask how often the two of them talk, how they even became friends, were they actually friends and why were they spending their time talking about Lena Luthor.

She doesn’t ask any of those things as she goes off to talk to someone boring and, as the entire night ends in just about averted disaster, she vaguely thinks she should have just told them to fuck off so she wouldn’t have this moment where she couldn’t find Kara in the commotion.

Until Kara’s suddenly right in front of her eyes out of nowhere.

“Kara,” she breathes.

“Hey, I’ve been looking all over for you,” she says casually as she steps closer and assesses Lena for damage. Lena does the same in return – finds Kara’s hair a little ruffled like she’d been running, or stepped outside into a windstorm, but she’s unharmed and Lena unclenches her jaw.

She never would’ve forgiven herself if Kara got hurt somewhere she talked her into going. She never should have talked her into coming in the first place when she knew there was danger. She should have rescinded the offer the second Supergirl said there was cause for alarm.

Lena makes her driver take Kara home alone to her apartment and ignores her texts for three days after because she didn’t deserve this. She didn’t deserve to have a friend like Lena who would always be a liability, who would end up being the reason she was seriously hurt. Or worse.

She ignores her texts for three days until Kara appears in her office with lunch and she suddenly feels every bad thought melt away because she knew two things very well: one - she couldn’t stay away from Kara even if she tried, and two – Kara would never let her try.

* * *

When Kara invited her round to her apartment to watch a movie, her immediate thought was no – they had lunch in crowded places and coffees under times limits and talked at galas where Lena had plenty of excuses to run off when things got a little too heavy.

Thoughts two through a thousand mostly consist of how much she wants to spend time with Kara beyond all those distractions, how much she wants to learn more about her and be known in return, no matter how terrifying the concept was.

So she says yes, and turns up with two bags filled with snacks at the exact minute she was asked to arrive, even if Kara resolutely said she’d bought enough when Lena asked.

Kara rolls her eyes when she sees them but takes them off her hands with a smile, only to put them down again to wrap Lena in a hug because they do that now apparently and Lena’s at the point where she’s almost stopped that brief automatic moment where she freezes up at the contact.

(Sometimes she stands in front of the mirror and practices relaxing her shoulders. It’s stupid. She’ll keep doing it until she gets it right anyway).

“How was your day?” Kara asks as she leads Lena to the couch and spreads a blanket across both of their laps that has them sitting closer than they normally would. It’s another thing Lena’s getting used to – responding with an actual answer instead of brushing it off with an ‘ _it was fine’_.

“Long. I’ve got a great idea for a new project but instead of actually being able to work on it, I’ve had to spend all day defending the idea to board members who don’t understand it at all because their brains are the size of peas. It’s not ending so badly though.” She nudges Kara gently and _oh_ that was another new thing - she thinks she’s flirting? In that, she wants to be flirting, and wasn’t flirting two thirds intent anyway?

Kara grins, “I’m glad I could help - though I’m surely your mostly talking about how awesome The Princess Bride is.”

“I’m sure it’ll be as great as you say.” It’s barely started and Lena knows she’s going to have no idea what’s happening on the screen. She very much plans to escape to the toilet at some point to read the synopsis and randomly pick a fake favourite part to tell Kara when she asks. “How about you? How was your day?”

“Um…” Kara pauses, seemingly deliberating before she continues. “I had a panic attack actually. I haven’t had one in a long time so it was kind of terrifying.”

“What triggered it?” Lena asks and Kara hesitates again. “I’m sorry, that was insensitive. I don’t want to bring it all back up for you if you’re not ready to talk about it.”

“No, it’s just… I’m adopted, you know that. I- um- my parents died when I was thirteen in a… house fire. I lost everything that I ever knew, even the stupid things like my favourite stuffed animal or the shirt my dad gave me on my seventh birthday.

“And when I went to the Danvers I felt like I had to hide myself away. Not because they did anything to make it so, they were great but I was thirteen in a place I didn’t understand, in a place where I thought I had no place in the world and so I didn’t really make time to process things. Instead I built a wall around me. A wall that I didn’t even let myself past.

“I found myself in a situation today that reminded me of the day I lost my home, that reminded me of the, what felt like _years_ , after where I was stuck, confined to the darkness with nothing but me and my thoughts and it terrified me. It scared me because it was so easy to revert back to being that scared little kid who wouldn’t let anyone in and I thought that I was stronger than that now.

“I’m supposed to be stronger than that now.”

“Kara you’re the strongest person I know and I’ve met two Supers.” Kara lets out a wet laugh and Lena rewards herself with a gentle smile of her own. “Bravery can’t exist without fear so embrace it because, you may have been scared, but you still made it through to the end of the day with that goofy smile on your face and told me all of this instead of building your walls back up. That’s brave.”

When Kara hugs her then, Lena doesn’t flinch; instead she lets Kara hide her face in her neck and rubs her back until she feels the tears begin to dry on her skin and smiles as softly as she can when Kara pulls back even though her mouth feels a little shaky because she’s definitely thinking about something she shouldn’t.

Thinking about what it might be like to kiss her only friend in the world.

* * *

Lena feels like shit.

She was having the worst day of her life, which was maybe a slight exaggeration, but it also wasn’t at all because she’d gotten used to the rest of the world trying to kill her – she hadn’t come to expect it from her own body.

She woke up feeling like her head was trapped in a vice and after a few rounds in the toilet that eventually lead to a drowsy nap on the cold tiles, things weren’t looking up. She knows it’s bad when she doesn’t even try to go into the office, can barely get a single leg into trousers without toppling over. She knows it’s really bad when Jess puts the phone down on Lena telling her she won’t make it in today and gets a call from Sam five minutes later saying she heard Lena was dying.

Sam was even more prone to exaggeration than Lena.

Sam was also prone to meddling.

Which is why, when Lena hears a knock on her door and braves the walk from her bed to the sound and finds Kara on the other side, she knows exactly who sent her and exactly who put that frantic look on Kara’s face that says _oh my god is Lena really dying right now?_

“You weren’t at L-Corp today and you weren’t answering my messages so I called Sam and she said you were sick but you told me you haven’t been sick since college and we both know you’re not good at taking caring of yourself at the best of times so here I am.”

Kara punctuates the sentence with a lift of her bag-laden arms and a new kind of smile that looks half like sympathy and half like she knows she’s overstepping the boundaries she put in place for Lena herself but wanted to take the chance.

“Hi,” Lena says dazedly.

“Hi,” Kara presses the back of her hand to her forehead gently. “I brought you some stuff and then I can totally get out of your hair if you just want to climb back into bed.” There it is – the out. Lena doesn’t want to take it for a single second. She steps aside to let Kara in.

There’s a familiarity to the way Kara steers herself towards the kitchen even if she really has no idea where she’s going and Lena finds herself entranced by the way she navigates the space with ease and confidence - even if she opens the wrong drawers and cupboards multiple times.

Lena zones out and stares until one thing becomes abundantly clear - Kara brought way too much. There are weird looking drinks that she places in the fridge, a pharmacy worth of drugs and various soup-looking things in faded containers that scream homemade and how gay is it, on a scale of one to Lena files her nails right before Kara comes for Monday coffee just so she _knows,_ that the thought of having some of Kara’s Tupperware in her cupboard makes her feel a little swirly?

“I don’t think I need this much stuff, Kara.”

“I don’t really know how to deal with sickness so I just called like all the hu- all my friends and they all said different things and I didn’t want to pick one and it be wrong so I brought them all.”

“You’re my favourite,” Lena says with too much warmth to be hidden just like every time she says it now. It’s a new thing. Putting it to words. The feeling is much older.

“Can you eat?” Lena nods. “Good. I’ll heat you up some soup and then I can go?”

“Soup sounds good. You should stay though. I could use the company for a bit – I feel a little strange not having seen another human being yet today,” Lena jokes. Kara’s slightly strained laughter is paired with a sharp push of her glasses up the bridge of her nose. It’s really cute.

“Why don’t you get comfy on the couch while I figure out the world’s fanciest microwave that looks like it’s just been unboxed.” She wasn’t entirely wrong. It hadn’t really seen any use since she got it – pretty much nothing but the wine glasses and a single fork in the kitchen did.

She used to love cooking, used to spend hours experimenting with flavours and trying new dishes and learning new techniques with fancy French names – it was like science with food at the end. She never really found the time now. She should really start again. Kara would probably appreciate it and then maybe some of her Tupperware could be in Kara’s cupboards... she’d have to buy some first.

Lena takes the advice in the end though, bundles all the blankets she owns into her arms and drowns herself in them on her couch, flicking on a random channel and putting her glasses on so she can actually see anything more than a foot in front of her.

Kara stumbles when she appears by her side, miraculously not spilling a single drop of soup, seemingly affected by something Lena can’t work out.

“Are you okay?”

Kara’s body undergoes a restart as she moves again and waves off Lena’s curiosity with a simple excuse. “Oh, yeah, the bowls just hot. Here.”

“Thank you.” The soup is delicious and Lena doesn’t get a chance to say that after the first bite because she suddenly realises she was starving and practically inhales the whole bowl. It’s only when the empty bowl is placed on the coffee table that she asks “You made this?”

“It’s an old family recipe. Took me a long time to find flavours that matched how I remembered it but I finally figured it out a couple years ago. I’ve actually never made it for someone else before but it always makes me feel better so I thought it might help you.” The magnanimity of the gesture doesn’t go unnoticed by Lena, the fact that she’s sharing something with her that she’s never shared with anyone else. That might top the Tupperware.

“You don’t talk about them much - your family. It must be hard, knowing so much about them. I mean, you were young, _too young_ , to have lost them but you spent so much time with them before that.” Thirteen was old enough to remember exactly what you’d lost. She wonders how Kara carries that around with her every day, how she shoulders the weight of her family alone.

“I marked my calendar once, for the day that signalled I’d spent more of my life without them than with them. The whole day was so unremarkable to everyone else. The world kept turning and not a single thing bad happened and Alex was there to hold my hand like she knew why I’d circled the date even when I didn’t tell her.

“I spent the whole day thinking how strange it is to remember something no one else does. How strange to hear the word ‘mom’ and think of two separate people at once and how strange that I spent so much time with these people and I can’t even remember what they sound like.

“Sometimes I don’t talk about them because I know it makes people uncomfortable, and sometimes I avoid it because I know Alex and Eliza want to help me but I can see the pain in their eyes , and sometimes I just don’t because I’m scared saying it out loud will make me realise how much I don’t remember – like I’ll start a story about a day that meant everything to me and halfway through I won’t remember what my dad said to me or the exact shade of my mom's eyes or the way the house always smelled like her…

“Does that make sense?”

Lena nods minutely, “I remember the day I couldn’t remember what my mother looked like anymore. I don’t remember forgetting but I remember someone asking me and picturing her in my head and it being so… _vague_. So incomplete where it used to be the clearest thing I knew. It’s scary.

“But sometimes I think, when I talk about her, even just out loud to myself, her smile comes through a little brighter in my mind. So, if you ever want to talk to someone about them, about your home, then I’m always here to listen, Kara. Any time.”

“You’re _my_ favourite.”

“I’m gonna tell Alex,” Lena threatens.

“She’ll move on,” Kara brushes off easily and Lena laughs until it shifts into coughing. Kara rubs her back through the entire ordeal – slips her hand down the back of her shirt and rubs the bare, heated skin and she could get used to being sick.

Cuddled up on her couch with Kara and a movie she can’t focus on is the best she’s felt in months.

* * *

Kara’s quiet.

It’s absurdly disarming in that Lena had gotten used to Kara filling the silence her life left behind – had come to crave it. She still talks and asks questions but she’s only half-present as she tears the napkin in her hands in hundreds of tiny shreds. Only stopping when Lena physically puts her hand on Kara’s frantic fingers to get them to stop.

“Kara, darling, if you wanted a new job as my paper shredder, all you had to do was ask. I hate the contraption in the corner.” That wasn’t actually true at all. Lena quite enjoyed the moment of her day when she put paper after paper through the machine, listening the mechanical slice – it was therapeutic in a way. But, ultimately, if the other option was to watch Kara’s digits rip with deft movements, she knew exactly which one she would pick.

“Come to Game Night!” Kara shouts and Lena won’t admit that she almost falls off the couch when she jumps but she definitely does. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be so loud. I know that you said no last time and I know it means you have to hang out with all of my friends at once instead of bumping into one maybe in passing but I feel like we’ve come a long way since the first time I asked and I’d just really like it if you came.”

“Okay.”

It’s Kara’s turn to be startled, “Okay?”

“I’ve worked with Winn and Alex a few times now and they seem nice, I can’t imagine the rest of them are horrible, and if you want me there, then I’m there.”

“Just like that?”

“Last time you asked I was trying to not be your friend but I seemed to have messed up somewhere along the way on that one and got stuck with you so might as well go all in.” Kara mutters about how she definitely wasn’t ‘stuck’ under her breath and Lena pushes her gently - thinks nothing of the fact that Kara’s moves with a second's delay. “This is what you were so freaked out over?”

“Everyone else has the perfect partner.” Lena’s not sure if she’s hearing the _and you’re mine_ that goes unspoken correctly or if it’s just the blood rushing through her ears whispering things that she’ll only make herself sad hoping for.

“Well we’ll crush them all. After you show me how to play all the games that is because I literally only know chess.” She somehow didn’t think her world ranking was going to help her with Kara’s friends.

“If this were a movie, it would totally be a montage moment,” Kara claps excitedly. Lena feels a little like it is when she arrives at Kara’s that night and is speed taken through all the games they might possibly play.

And when Kara’s friends arrive maybe they do dominate a little and maybe Lena is a little smug. They crush at trivia because Lena has a propensity for learning facts that will never mean anything to her life and Kara absorbs pop culture like a sponge that went through the most insane natural selection process.

They’re oddly in sync on Charades and Articulate and Lena discovers that a side-degree in physics is the perfect training programme for Jenga whilst she completely sucks at Pictionary in a way that even she has to laugh because apparently her artistic talent began and ended with schematics.

She draws a fried egg that is for sure just a UFO that Winn keeps tipsily laughing at and asking Kara if it looked familiar until Kara pushed him off his chair and he didn’t say much at all beyond _ow_.

It's nice hanging out with Kara’s friends.

She feels a little like maybe they could be her friends too.

Winn asks her about things she never thought he’d remember and Alex always seems to know when she needs another drink and the exact thing she’s craving and even James, Superman’s proclaimed best friend, is being friendly and Lena feels like maybe letting a few more people past her walls wouldn’t be so bad.

Maybe it would all end up okay this time.

* * *

Maybe it wouldn’t be okay.

It starts with Supergirl on her balcony with tears in her eyes. It’s a bad omen if Lena had ever seen one - a Superhero breaking down only a few steps away from her.

She’s never seen her anything less than superiorly sturdy and strong. She was supposed to be a pinnacle of power, not a young girl in a suit trying to save the world.

But that’s exactly what she really was, wasn’t it? Because she did exist outside of the suit as much as Lena may have tried to ignore it. Ignore that small part of her brain, right at the back, squared away in a tiny box that reads don’t open. That small part that knew exactly why she ignores it, that knew exactly why the hero on her balcony looks a like her world is about to fall apart and she’ll be the reason that it does.

No words are exchanged.

Not one the entire time.

Supergirl lands with wet eyes and produces a single pair of black rimmed glasses from her left boot that she slips on before pulling her hair away from her face and into a simple bun.

Lena turns away, picks up her purse from her desk and walks straight out of her office, switching the light off on her way out.

There’s no chase. No rushed explanations or pleas for Lena to listen for just one second. When Lena makes it home, a single text on her phone simply reads ‘ _I’m sorry’_. She doesn’t respond to it for a week as she talks her round and round and round as to why Kara might have done it, why Kara hid the fact that she was Supergirl for so long.

_Kara was Supergirl_.

She takes the Luthor route first. Tells herself that Kara didn’t tell her because there was always that part of her that wondered if Lena had the same inclination towards insanity that the rest of her gene pool did but all she can think the entire time is how Kara defended her in the restaurant. How she said Lena was nothing like Lex with more convicted than Lena had said anything in her life.

She moves on through lack of trust, the need to protect those around her, just genuinely not knowing how to say it. Back to the Luthor problem.

She can’t figure it out. She feels a little like she might tear her hair out if she thinks about it without truly _knowing_ for a single second longer because she’d always hated equations without solutions. It’s on the fourth day that she writes Kara a message. The fourth day that Kara arrives at her door within a minute of it being sent.

“You didn’t want to fly onto my balcony this time?” Lena snips. It doesn’t feel so much like the victory she thought it might when Kara’s shoulders as she passes through the doorway, into Lena’s home and the argument two wrong answers away from starting.

“I’ve always liked being Kara with you. I didn’t want to do this as Supergirl.”

“So you think of them as two separate people?” She definitely always treated them that way. Had two conversations with Lena about the same thing from two separate standpoints like she was getting a chance to redo what she said. Two separate voices sitting on her shoulders, trying to guide her through decisions in her life.

“Like two halves of my whole – my Kara Zor-El.” It was a nice name, said with a hint of an accent that Lena imagines a young Kara desperately trying to drop. A name from a forgotten world. A name that Lena wonders how often she gets to wear.

“I’m angry at you because I can’t make myself be angry with you,” Lena sighs. Throughout everything, throughout every explanation she placed into Kara’s mouth in her head, she could never find herself on the other end of it angry. There was disappointment, and doubt, and a hint of self-deprecation at how she couldn’t have seen something so obvious but never anger.

Because she couldn’t stop thinking about all the good things about Kara, all the things she loved about Kara and Kara had made obvious she loved about her. Because that self-protective part of her brain that said she should hate Kara for what she’s done couldn’t outweigh the tiny boxes, that weren’t so tiny anymore, that overflowed with halfway-to-love confessions.

“That makes no sense but also you’ve never been wrong in your life so okay and I’m sorry for that. But I’m also not sorry at all because I don’t want you to be angry with me.”

“I just want to know why, Kara? Why lie to me all this time? And why tell me now?”

“I wanted to tell you so many times. I never got quite as far as actually trying to do it and for the longest time I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t do it. I thought it was because I’d never really had to do it before – it’s usually an accident or someone else tells them or they guess. I kept hoping you would just _guess_.

“But it was never about figuring out how and it was _never_ about figuring out if I could trust you because I’ve trusted you since the second you told me all you want is to make a name outside of your family. But your family is why I didn’t say anything. Your mother told me you’d hate me. She said she wouldn’t tell you herself because she wanted to wait, wanted the secret to fester and fester and fester until it finally came out and you would hate me for not telling you for so long.

“And it did – fester. The thought of you hating me followed me everywhere and the more I cared about you, the more the fear crept up and so I kept putting it off but then it kept clawing its way up my throat every time we spoke until I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

“I decided to tell you because you deserve to know, because you mean more to me than I know how to put into words in any language on earth and I just wanted to start making it better instead of continuing to let it get worse without you even knowing I was ruining this. _Us_.”

_Us._

Maybe it’s not meant the way Lena wants it to be but it slams into her like it is. Maybe it’s wrong that knowing Kara suffered with it makes her feel better about it all. Maybe it makes her feel like she wasn’t the only one who _felt_ these last three days. Maybe it gives her hope.

“You really shouldn’t listen to my mother, Kara. I certainly don’t.”

Kara smiles tentatively, “You don’t hate me?”

“I tried to, for like a day. I told myself you were laughing behind my back about keeping the secret, and you were only being my friend to keep an eye on the resident Luthor, and that you never cared about me the way I cared about you. But I’ve always been a woman of science which means facts and evidence and proof and all you’ve ever done is show me how much you care.

“So I’m hurt. My pride is wounded and I feel like an idiot but I don’t hate you, Kara. I never could.” Kara steps forwards with open arms like that was the exact phrase she needed to hear to be activated. Lena lets herself fall into her warmth, slides her arms around Kara’s waist and drops her head onto chest.

“Thank you for failing to hate me,” Kara mumbles against the top of her head. The vibrations trickle through her entire body.

“Thank you for telling me your secret. I promise it’s safe with me.”

“I’ve always felt safe with you so I have no doubt my secret will be too.”

Lena pulls back slightly to hit Kara with her most serious look. “You better not be hiding anything else though, Kara _Zor-El_. You get one pass,” she jokes… _mostly jokes_ but Kara’s face twists cautiously, drops her arms from Lena and starts pacing in a way that can never really be good.

“Is that one pass still ongoing? Like if I tell you something now that I’ve been hiding from you for a long time does it count under the same pass as the Super secret or is it an entirely new issue because there’s something else I think you should know, something that I never thought I could tell you because I felt like you needed to know the other thing first and the other thing was-“

“Kara, just say it.”

“I’mfallinginlovewithyou,” Kara bursts. Suddenly stock still.

Lena’s heart stops. Jolts. Clunks. Restarts. She’s not blinking and then blinking too much and her hands are suddenly incredibly sweaty in a way they’ve never been before and the butterflies in her stomach are forming a circle of death and she knows the beats about to drop.

“You don’t have to say anything. I completely understand if you don’t feel the same way and I don’t want to make you uncomfortable so I can back off for a little while if that’s what you want and I promise I can keep it under wraps – I promise to never make you feel like you owe me anything in return. I just needed to say it because I-“

“I’m falling in love with you too,” Lena breathes.

“Felt like I couldn’t--“ Kara halts in the same second. “You what?”

“I’m falling in love with you too. I have been for a while.”

Kara’s whole face is smiling, even if her mouth is painted into the picture of shock. She looks like Supergirl soaking up the sun - bright eyes and luminous skin and hope. “How long’s a while?”

“I don’t know. I thought you were beautiful the second I saw you. I thought you were sweet the first time you brought me coffee. I thought you were hot when you stood up for me. I thought you were strong when you told me about your past and then somewhere along the way it all came together and I woke up one day thinking about you and it kind of… hit me.” Had been hitting her ever since.

“You thought I was hot?”

Lena barks out a laugh, “Unbelievably.”

“And now?” Kara asks lowly, stepping securely back into Lena’s space.

“Oh, I don’t know now,” Lena mocks and then Kara’s kissing her. No preamble or pretence. Just strong hands that cup her jaw and a bold mouth that teases Lena’s lips and draws out a whimper she tries so hard to contain. And yeah, _holy shit yeah_ , was she hot.

“Did that clarify anything?”

“A few things. I might still have some outstanding queries.” Several queries with multiple sub-points that should definitely also be explored thoroughly and at great length.

Kara grins, “I’ve got time.”

Kara Zor-El is a whirlwind and a gentle breeze wrapped into one person.

Lena quite likes being swept away.


End file.
